UPDATE: Notre Dame men's basketball: Irish endure 'thorough beating'

SOUTH BEND -- They had designs of taking this season to places it had never before gone at Notre Dame, of chasing down a Big East regular-season championship and playing for a league tournament title.

But a dismantling at home at the hands of an unranked league opponent, albeit one that played really well Monday, left the No. 24 Notre Dame men's basketball team nowhere near the league's elite.

Six games into conference play, the Irish feel fortunate to be average.

Outworked in nearly every phase from nearly the opening tip, the Irish lost for the third time in the last four games and the second time at home this season following a 63-47 victory by Georgetown.

Notre Dame fells to 15-4, 3-3 in the Big East.

"That," Irish coach Mike Brey said, "was a thorough beating."

Brey labeled the evening a meeting between men (Georgetown) and boys (Notre Dame). But shouldn't an Irish team that returns all five starters off last season's team and recorded a 13-5 league record be men on a night when being men is mandatory?

So what happened?

"We haven't been able to take punches well in games and then close it out at the end," said power forward Jack Cooley, who finished with 10 points and 10 rebounds for his 12th double-double of the season, 25th of his career. "The last eight minutes of games, we haven't been playing very well at all.

"We've got to be tougher mentally. "

The Irish led once -- after the first basket -- and trailed by as many as 22 points. When it was over -- and it was over once the Hoyas ripped off 18 unanswered points after the Irish had cut their second-half deficit to three -- it was the second most lopsided league loss at home under Brey and the fewest points scored at home in a Big East home game.

"It's a hard league," Brey said. "We're fortunate that thing counted only one loss the way that thing went."

Notre Dame hasn't lost a game as convincingly during Brey's 13-year tenure since Villanova won by 17 points on March 2, 2009. Like that night -- Senior Night -- Notre Dame never really had much of a chance.

It was a season low for points for the Irish, who have labored to get to 58 and 47 in their two league losses at home. It also was a season low for field-goal percentage. Coming into the contest as the best shooting team in the Big East, Notre Dame connected on 34.7 percent of its shots. Also the best shooting team in the league from 3, the Irish staggered to a 2-for-16 showing (12.5 percent) from behind the arc.

The home team also was outrebounded 35-24 and allowed an opponent to shoot a season high (53.3 percent) from the field, 46.7 percent from 3.

"They really bullied us," said Irish junior guard Eric Atkins. "They did whatever they wanted. They handled us in all phases of the game."

Six nights earlier after a lackluster effort and a loss at St. John's, Brey blistered his team in the locker room. On Monday, his post-game comments were brief. There really wasn't much to say. He did call for the Irish to return to the arena Tuesday at 8 a.m. What they might do -- practice, watch film, heck, maybe even run laps -- was still to be determined.

Anything and everything is open to change. That includes the lineup, the rotation, maybe even a different pre-game meal.

"We're going to need some new juice," Brey said.

Two weeks earlier, the Irish were sailing along at 2-0 in the league after winning at Cincinnati. But that night may have unexpectedly marked the beginning of the left turn to a season now teetering dangerously close to heading south. In a hurry.

"If anything, we all got a little cocky after starting off in the Big East 2-0," Atkins said. "We need to all come back to Earth."

The Irish crash-landed Monday. Notre Dame trailed by 13 points less than halfway through the first half after Georgetown hit eight of its first 10 shots. The Irish mustered a few stops here and easy transition baskets there to get to within three in the second half, but the Hoyas had an answer.

A big answer.

Up by three, the Hoyas tracked down a missed shot before Indianapolis native D'Vauntes Smith-Rivera connected on a critical 3-pointer from the left wing to double the lead. Georgetown ran off the next 15 points to put any Irish comeback thoughts to rest.

"We sucked it up and played hard today," said Hoyas coach John Thompson III.

When the game got tight, so did Notre Dame, which labored 7:26 without a point. As was the case against Connecticut, Brey believed the Irish "played with the weight of the world on their shoulders" when the game got tight.

"It was an eerie feeling to kind of be out of it the last 10 minutes in our building," Brey said. "It was creepy. It wasn't pleasant. It was very foreign territory.

"Unless we get our gears going, it can happen again in this league."

Few players in the home locker room had answers, but they better find some. Fast.

"If we're going to play like that," Atkins said, "we're going to come in last in the league."